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Maradona Keeps It Lively With Pelé and the Koreans

By Jeff Z. Klein June 16, 2010 4:16 pmJune 16, 2010 4:16 pm

The best came last. A relatively bland first week of the World Cup was salvaged on Wednesday by the last opening match, Switzerland’s shocking 1-0 upset of Spain. It was the first time the Swiss had ever beaten the Spaniards (a streak covering 18 previous games over the course of 85 years); it was only the second loss in 46 games for Spain (whose previous defeat came last year, also in South Africa, to the Americans); and most important, it finally got people to stop talking about vuvuzelas.

On Wednesday Maradona fired back a memorable riposte. “Pelé should go back to the museum,” he told reporters at a news conference, then added a zinger for Michel Platini, the UEFA president and former France great who has also doubted Maradona’s coaching ability: “We all know what the French are like, and Platini as a Frenchman thinks he knows it all.”
Meow! Let’s put aside Platini for now and look at the Maradona-Pelé feud, which dates to 2000. That was the year FIFA sponsored a worldwide fan poll for player of the century, which Maradona won with 54 percent of the vote to Pelé’s 19 percent. But FIFA decided to create a second player-of-the-century award based on a vote of journalists and officials, and that one went overwhelmingly to Pelé. Maradona finished a distant third behind Alfredo di Stefano.

But Maradona and Pelé have not always had the claws out for each other. Here they are making nice for the 2005 debut of Maradona’s show on Argentine TV, “La Noche del 10″:

Watching that, you have to wonder, Why can’t we all just get along?

* * *

That’s a question that might be asked of Maradona and South Korea Coach Huh Jung-moo ahead of the Argentina-South Korea match on Thursday. When both were players at the 1986 World Cup, Huh cut down Maradona with a hard tackle — South Korea played an exceedingly rugged brand of football in those days — that left Maradona on the ground in pain:

Last December Maradona noted that the experience “wasn’t playing football — it was more like taekwondo.”

On Wednesday reporters asked Huh about that game and Maradona’s remark.

“I did not kick him intentionally — if that had been the case, the referee would have sent me off, but I didn’t even get a yellow card during the match,” Huh replied somewhat testily. “I don’t care what Maradona says. There’s no point in talking about something that happened more than 20 years ago.”

Huh spoke in error — he did receive a yellow card in the 1986 match.

* * *

And now a musical interlude, consisting of three World Cup songs. We begin with the current No. 1 single in Britain, the Simon Cowell-produced “Shout for England,” which uses the old Tears for Fears hit as a basis for England’s unofficial World Cup song:

It’s the first time in 40 years that there’s no official team song for England. But Germany does have an official song: “Fackeln im Wind” (“Torch in the Wind”), from the rapper Bushido:

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Goal, The New York Times soccer blog, will report on news and features from the world of soccer and around the Web. Times editors and reporters will follow international tournaments and provide analysis of games. There will be interviews with players, coaches and notable soccer fans, as well as a weekly blog column by Red Bulls forward Jozy Altidore. Readers can discuss Major League Soccer, foreign leagues and other issues with fellow soccer fans.